Everyone knew going into the vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment that the proposition was a loser. From the standpoint of pure votes, anyway.
No one, not even the most rabid conservative Republican legislators, believed that the amendment had a snowball's chance in hell of passing. And indeed, it didn't.
Still, conventional wisdom said the vote was going to be a political plus for the president. In the political establishment, it was seen as a bone the president could throw to the right-wingers to bolster his conservative credentials with them.
In addition, the president and his Republican strategists figured it would put the Democratic challengers, Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, in an uncomfortable position, as they would have to explain to voters why they opposed the amendment if, as they both say, they oppose marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
Finally, conventional wisdom figured Bush could also use the FMA, and the fact that it failed, in the presidential campaign. No doubt Bush planned to point to the effort and tell voters that it was the Democrats' fault the thing never passed. He would paint the Democrats and their presidential nominee as a bunch of lefty liberals who are out of step and out of sync with mainstream America, which he believes is opposed to equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
At least, that was the conventional wisdom.
The problem with conventional wisdom, of course, is that it is so often wrong. So was the case with the assumptions by the Republican taskmasters on the federal marriage amendment.
Instead of making Bush look like a hero of 'traditional American values,' and painting the Democrats as ridiculous left-wing Commies, or putting John Kerry and John Edwards in the uncomfortable political spotlight, the move on the FMA split the Republican party, irritated 'mainstream' American voters and made Bush and his minions look a little silly, if not downright mean-spirited.
If the proposed amendment had ever made it to the floor of the Senate, it would have taken 67 votes to approve it and move it along the arduous process of becoming part of the Constitution.
But the pro-amendment forces couldn't even muster the necessary 60 votes they needed on a procedural issue to get the proposal to the floor. In fact, the final vote of 50 to 48 was embarrassing to the Republicans and to the White House.
Indeed, the whole amendment issue made quite a few Republican Senators more than a little uncomfortable.
Six Republicans openly defied their party and helped block the measure. Political analysts say that number doesn't even begin to reflect the amount of division in the Republican party, as many senators who are opposed to an amendment agreed to support their party's leaders on the initial procedural vote, knowing in advance it would fail and they wouldn't have to really make a stand.
Many Republican senators in close-call elections this fall reportedly resent the forced vote. They rightly reckon that the most conservative voters are also the strongest supporters of the FMA. But swing voters—those highly coveted moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats—are the ones who would be more likely to be turned off by the gesture of voting on the amendment.
There was even a public split in the vice-presidential position on the subject. While Dick Cheney did the dutiful thing and publicly said he supported the president's position, news stations repeatedly ran footage of Cheney's comments during the 2000 presidential campaign, where he clearly said that he thought everyone should be left alone to make whatever relationships they chose, and that at any rate the states, not the federal government, should regulate such personal matters.
And just days before the Senate took up the measure, Lynne Cheney strategically expressed to the press her sentiment that the federal government shouldn't be in the marriage-amendment business. Of course, the well-known fact that the Cheneys have a lesbian daughter, Mary, left little doubt in most people's minds where the vice-presidential family's heart was on the amendment, regardless of the loyalty posturing by the vice president.
Meanwhile, if you are to believe public opinion polls and letters to editors and newspaper editorials all around the country, most 'mainstream' Americans seem perturbed at best with the whole game-show like atmosphere surrounding the charade of the vote.
This national irritation at the staging of a vote on the amendment has little to do with whether or not a majority of Americans agree with such an amendment. (Most polls do show, however, that while a majority of Americans may still oppose marriage rights for same-sex couples, most also oppose enshrining that discrimination into the Constitution.)
Many voters, it seems, are rightly aggravated that the president and the Senate would waste precious time and energy on an issue whose outcome is already pre-ordained. Regardless of their opinions on the amendment or on their party affiliation, a lot of Americans simply saw right through the ploy as politicking at its worst.
A lot of people were rightly asking: What, we have nothing else more important to spend our time and energy on than an amendment we know is doomed to fail?
Ask the average Joe what's on his mind during this election year, and I doubt many would place homosexual nuptials before the war in Iraq, or worries over such things as the economy and jobs and inflation and education and healthcare.
Finally, Bush's notion that forcing a vote on the FMA would put his Democratic opponents, John Kerry and John Edwards—both senators—on the spot failed miserably. The two Johns were cleverly absent from the Senate that day, and the truth is, they didn't need to be there. They knew the amendment was going nowhere, and they also knew that being on the Hill that day was a no-win situation. They deftly expressed their opposition to same-sex marriage and their opposition to the amendment to ban same-sex marriage, while avoiding both the avalanche of reporter's questions and TV news cameras.
As odd as it sounds to say out loud, we as gay and lesbian people should probably be glad that Bush and his advisers made the big mistake they did in focusing so much of a spotlight on such a losing proposition.
